It's 2016 and it is time to understand that Experience Design goes far beyond UX. So, what is it anyway?
And why such a trendy term is still blurred for practitioners and scholars.
I challenge you. Ask fifteen designers and you will have fifteen different answers. So, come on…give me your best shot, put in practice that elevator pitch and sum it in a convincing and powerful sentence. What is experience design?
“Experience Design as a discipline is so new that its very definition is in flux” — Nathan Shedroff
The quote above could has been said today, but true is that fifteen years have passed since then and ironically, not much seems to have changed.
We are in 2016 and Experience Design as a distinct discipline in its own right remains unclear and it still demands to be articulated and recognised academically and professionally (Bloomsbury, 2015).
The Emerge of Experience Design
Experience Design might has emerged as a consequence of a new millennium’s Experience Society (Schulze, 2007), which values deceleration instead of acceleration, less instead of more, uniqueness instead of standardisation, concentration instead of diversion, and making instead of consuming.
The opportunity for value creation through experiences became evident, leading us to a parallel between the high growing demand of experience designers and the roots of post-materialism, again praising “doing over having”, or the “experience over things” (Pine and Gilmore, 2011).
Yet, it is categorically necessary to highlight and clarify that things are not the opposite of experiences, but complementary create and substantially shape them. Moreover, despite any theoretical shift from a materialistic society that craves things, to a post-materialistic culture that nurtures experience, the value of physical items has always increased if they are accompanied by a good story (Bloomsbury, 2015).
“An experience is a story, emerging from the dialogue of a person with her or his world through action” — Hassenzahl
That is the reason why understanding context is an essential aspect of the designer’s role (Grefé, 2011). Keeping in mind that a perception is always true in the mind of the perceiver we can say that experiences can only be afforded and not entirely created (Hassenzahl, 2010). The more you understand the people you are designing for, the less is the gap between what you idealise and what people actually experience through a sequence of many relationships with a service over an entire journey.
Experience Design may thus act as an umbrella term for a number of design approaches that are “human-centred”. True is that we probably have less confusion when it is described and understood by its sub-practices.
And I would definitely mention Customer Experience, being so closely related to Service Design, we probably have something to learn from our friends in Marketing that are in this road for so long. But this is another story…
As Lauren Currie says, the fact is we are embracing the blurred boundaries between design disciplines, and facing the challenge of changing how we pose and solve problems.
To succeed in this context, all areas across various organisations have to overcome their differences, go further than their job descriptions and join forces to understand the whole picture and deliver a meaningful, engaging, superior experience.
As designers, being equipped with tools to bring ideas together, we are in charge to act as facilitators of Design Thinking. We should be the ones that will bring people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives and will find the common ground, the sweet spot, the value.
Therefore, is our responsibility to foster this conversation in the industry.
Amazing things can happen when we are able to see through each other’s eyes. This is the core of human-centred design and is also the core of innovative solutions. Experience Design is more than a discipline, it is a mindset.
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